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It shows how out of it I was in trying to be in it, acknowledging that I was out of it to myself, and then thinking, “Okay, how do I stop being out of it? Well, I get some legitimate illogical narrative ideas” — some novel, you know?
So I decided on three writers that I might be able to option their material and get some producer, or myself as producer, and then get some writer to do a screenplay on it, and maybe make a movie.
And so the three projects were “Do Androids Dream of Electric Sheep,” “Naked Lunch” and a collection of Bukowski. Which, in 1975, forget it — I mean, that was nuts. Hollywood would not touch any of that, but I was looking for something commercial, and I thought that all of these things were coming.
There would be no Blade Runner if there was no Ray Bradbury. I couldn’t find Philip K. Dick. His agent didn’t even know where he was. And so I gave up.
I was walking down the street and I ran into Bradbury — he directed a play that I was going to do as an actor, so we know each other, but he yelled “hi” — and I’d forgot who he was.
So at my girlfriend Barbara Hershey’s urging — I was with her at that moment — she said, “Talk to him! That guy really wants to talk to you,” and I said “No, fuck him,” and keep walking.
But then I did, and then I realized who it was, and I thought, “Wait, he’s in that realm, maybe he knows Philip K. Dick.” I said, “You know a guy named—” “Yeah, sure — you want his phone number?”
My friend paid my rent for a year while I wrote, because it turned out we couldn’t get a writer. My friends kept on me about, well, if you can’t get a writer, then you write.”
~ Hampton Fancher
“That was the most disappointing thing to me in how this thing was played. Is that I’m on the phone with you now, after all that’s been said, and the fundamental distinction between what James is dealing with in these other cases is not actually brought to the fore. The fundamental difference is that James Franco didn’t seek to use his position to have sex with anyone. There’s not a case of that. He wasn’t using his position or status to try to solicit a sexual favor from anyone. If he had — if that were what the accusation involved — the show would not have gone on. We would have folded up shop and we would have not completed the show. Because then it would have been the same as Harvey Weinstein, or Les Moonves, or any of these cases that are fundamental to this new paradigm. Did you not notice that? Why did you not notice that? Is that not something notable to say, journalistically? Because nobody could find the voice to say it. I’m not just being rhetorical. Why is it that you and the other critics, none of you could find the voice to say, “You know, it’s not this, it’s that”? Because — let me go on and speak further to this. If you go back to the L.A. Times piece, that’s what it lacked. That’s what they were not able to deliver. The one example in the five that involved an issue of a sexual act was between James and a woman he was dating, who he was not working with. There was no professional dynamic in any capacity.
~ David Simon
She’s totally insane. What I don’t get is, I’m an insulin-dependent diabetic too and I still manage to leave the house AND go to cocktail parties. I don’t really see that as an excuse to not leave your house, you just bring your medication with you. I wonder if she suffers from some kind of agorophobia or another type of panic disorder. That would be a shame, but I kind of take offense that she uses diabetes as an excuse not to leave the house, as if we should all just stay locked up and close to insulin at all times.
Also, I don’t understand why people who hate movies and think that they are so above trivial entertainments feel the need or desire to write about them.
Thank you- I knew she was gonzo when she offered to take down the Bay Blog posting if I offered her dirt on Bay. Bribery? No thank you.
Thanks for reprinting this, David… hilarious stuff!
She’s obviously a very lonely woman. And her way of feeding on the poison around her is kind of sad. But a blog posting about her on this site is an example of that poison… bringing her up for the pleasure of bringing her up only makes her stronger, Dave. It affirms her rotten ethos.
Do what she can’t do… speak no evil.
“Do what she can’t do… speak no evil.”
Agreed
No comment might make the problem go away quicker.
NO COMMENT MY FAT ASS!!!
First they came for the whatever and I said nothing
Then they came for the whoever and I said nothing
Then they came for me and there wasn’t anyone to help.
Nazis suck
That was funny, Don.
Ah Don forgot the Peoples Poem. He must not have studied for that test.
Als die Nazis die Kommunisten holten,
habe ich geschwiegen;
ich war ja kein Kommunist.
“When the Nazis (to take?) the communists,
I stayed silent;
I was not a communist.”
then it was socialists & Trade Unionists & Jews and many others but the Americans often take out the first stanza since they don;t want to utter “Communist”.
Hey I was a commie trade unionist…albeit a very conservative non-violent form…and I DO speak out.
But I should have clarified…what I meant by No comment.
I mean NO COMMENT on the “person” trying to get attention — Nikki FInk will always attempt to do so. She seems to need more attention than an angry toddler.
I didn;t mean no comment on the Ill she promotes. She should stopped dead in her tracks on THAT but LA Weekly doesn’t have the guts. If she becomes a liability financially maybe we will hear the end of the nonsense. maybe some nice libel suits.
If she were male I bet she would have been fired a long time ago.
I just don’t like HER as a person getting attention. Any attention is good for pain-in-the-arses like herself.
[In February, she reported the discord between executives at DreamWorks and Paramount, which had co-financed
she might report an event correctly or be given correct information on occasion Joe but it doesn;t take away from the nonsense and bile she reports as fact on an almost regular basis.
There’s too much mixing to know how much water is in the wine.
I don;t know anyone who can believe her–stuff always has to be verified.
So maybe in the 80s she displayed some journo integrity but this is 2007.
and I won;t forget the frequent dirty tricks hating against talent either–like when Charlize Theron was nom for an Oscar her mean-spirited article about how her Dad was shot–as if that event, long in CTs’ past would or should have any f*cking bearing on her getting a nomination or a win.
Not to mention that it was personal and should have been off limits.
Not professional. Not funny. Disgusting.
Ignore her, she’s earned it.
Attack her methods and disinformation.
So this chap is Carl Bernstein’s progeny. Where’s Ben Bradlee when you need him?
you mean Ben post “Jimmy’s world” of course.
But all this doesn;t matter since it’s(above) just my opinion & the LA Weekly column really, at the end fo the day is opinion too.
Just sayin’, fellas, if Kevin Smith’s Dogma taught us anything it’s that you can’t kill a Shit Monster by throwing shit back at it.
Oh and that even a total biscuit like Linda Fiorentino can be lit badly.
Hey if she isn’t a complete liar her book went “out” THIS week. Uh huh.
Your taste for nostalgia cause you to inaccurately assume that the WWD reporting of her late reporting on a story that was in play (and reported on) for months was important. That is the magic trick… screaming “I wrote it first” no matter who wrote what when.
Nikki deserves credit for being the only person seriously reporting on agents (though I assume every “story” is someone’s grudge) and she did break the NBC story a day early. Movie scoops? Almost none. (I’d say “none,” but I haven’t really been studying her.)
And she can’t complain about Dave putting this up because she did the exact same thing!
Finke can often be a bit over-the-top and constantly wants to remind us that she was first. But I also find the hateful reactions she gets over-the-top. She seems to have good contacts and reports on the industry in an interesting way.
She’s often labelled as hateful or petty. But I don’t see nearly as much outrage from people when it comes to someone like Jeffrey Wells, who is not only hateful and petty, but also outright misogynistic. And unlike Finke, he never breaks any original stories. In fact his column is little more than a string of links to other sites.
I think blogging in general lends itself to harsher reporting that can easily become over-the-top. And sometimes it can be too much. But Finke is by no means the worst of the bunch. And at least there’s some interesting stories and reporting hear and there on her blog.
I remember listening to Matt Drudge on the radio as I was driving home from Vegas a few years back. Anyway, Nikki Finke called in to report that Christopher Reeve had died. She talked for a while, did a fair job of sounding respectfully mournful, and then — I don’t think she knew she was on live — she goes “you better credit me with this scoop, Matt” and hung up.
That was the first time I’d ever heard her name. I remember my girlfriend saying, wow, that lady must be a piece of work. Obviously her instincts were right.
Here is the original story that Jeffrey Wells had broken in last week
http://hollywood-elsewhere.com/archives/2007/07/senator_taking.php
I’m pretty sure everyone has given up calling Jeffrey Wells out though. And soon enough they’ll do the same with Nikki.
You guys should have watched that Victoria Beckham Comes to America thing. It’s the funniest one hour of television all year.
“In her cartoon-like universe,. . .”
She has her own universe! Wow, no wonder people pay attention to her.
Emotional blackmail. Can someone please explain.
I got it. And Cassandra. She’s a Greek Chorus and a public forum. Please call out her and everybody’s inacuracies, I will read you more, but only if you keep it under 100 words. How’s that for blackmail.
A serious request: get rid of the red. Bad for work environments and makes everything you write feel longer.
David I heard a rumor that Finke served your ISP with a DMCA takedown notice. If she did SUE her- she doesn’t own the copyright to the article, WWD does and they have the only standing to send such a notice. She would have had to swear in the notice that she owned it, which is perjury.
Wow, one original story about Dimension abandoning a film. What a huge get for Wells. Doesn’t really change my main point though.
I haven’t heard a word from our ISP, so I can’t imagine it’s true, Don.
My guess is that she threatens that. I haven’t heard from WWD either. But at this point, WWD has turned this from an infringement issue into a legitimate news story by bending to the hot wind of La Finke. To further try to supress the story would make it more so. I would be happy to spend a couple of years in court fighting for the First Amendment value of this story, which WWD clearly has no further commercial value… thus their own takedown.
On the other hand, I can imagine that C. Nikki is going that way. She hasn’t tried to come right at me yet, which is unusual for her. Or perhaps she has realized that she is just damaging herself with every push now.
It’s funny, because I have had a video on YouTube taken down in the last week courtesy of Spike & Mike… can’t imagine they own the copyright either. (Not worth fighting that one… my goal was achieved, which was to get Cox & Combes the attention they deserved for “Washington.”) And oh the irony of Spike & Mike now being in the game of limiting access to great animation.
Was doing the interview, in the first place, part of her self-destructive streak? Personally I think it’s a journalistic travesty for you to repeatedly refer to her “as crazy.” And BTW, this red shit sucks.
Hejla – People tend to feel that crazy, male or female, is better left unadressed to stew in their own insanity. People who have no engaged have no idea how bad it is… so they dip their toe in… and soon find themselves screaming in their sleep.
But make no mistake… the hateful are hated… and always more than they realize. They are also in deep denial about how outrageous their behaviors are. They always see themselves as crusaders against a greater power. Classic sociopathic thinking.
But people find it very hard to manage the problem. It’s that these people are also willing to attack anyone at anytime – in public – and in a town of relatively quiet manipulation, that is very empowering.
She doesn’t give a shit about Hollywood, she’s reclusive, she hates authority, people respect her, she has power and she comes after you directly if she doesn’t like what you say about her. That’s David’s idea of crazy.
I know you’re right Dave, but Jeez, can you get a little distance from it, and report on it without getting so mudslinging and personal?
You don’t sound like you think I am right, T Holly. It sounds like you dig the rage machine.
This is the magic trick of it all. You are now defending the person who does nothing but sling mud and get personal… who has built herself on a mountain of it… who has gone after people behind the scenes – not right at anyone, ever – maliciously. And somehow, you have determined that I am mudslinging by commenting pretty gently on it.
What you don’t know is how the Rage Monkeys (Nikki is not alone) throw others into a tizzy… how it is hard to handle them, not because they are right, but because most of us are too civilized to use their tools of relentless bile when the stakes are (in the end) so low… how Nikki works far too effectively against the First Amendment while claiming to define it… and in the end, how completely uninterested in truth she is.
Rage Monkeys live to sell this Us vs Them shit. The issue of working in this industry is far more complex than that and those same Rage Monkeys not only know it, but live off of it. You can’t be a professional and a rebellious teen at the same time. It leads to nothing but hypocrisy.
With due respect to you and whoever you are, you have no idea. You write in response to this woman as though you get it. Like anything as ugly (spiritually) as dealing with Nikki, you have no way of knowing until you have been there. And no one I know who has been there – and it’s a lot of people – walks away with any variation in perception, aside from thinking her column is of value or not of value. But they all are happy to call her “Crazy Nikki.”
You want to smack me down for being one of the few who is willing to say what “we” all know out loud? Well, go to town. I have to live with my choices. You don’t. I have been very tolerant of Nikki. Too tolerant. And I know I will be too tolerant in the future as well. I don’t want to be in the business of debunking a gossip columnist every day. But now and again, the crazy drips over the side of the tub and I feel compelled to get out the mop.
For that, I cannot apologize… because it is the right thing to do. I only feel guilty about not really exposing her for all she is. Most people I know just figure that someone else will eventually throw the bucket of water at her and she’ll melt away. It’s a shame that a human has been reduced to that, but she has done the reducing herself (with the help of “friends” who think they are helping her).
“I’m pretty sure everyone has given up calling Jeffrey Wells out though. And soon enough they’ll do the same with Nikki.”
Unfortunately, KCamel, Jeff Wells still has the most bizarrely co-dependent/mutually abusive relationship with his readers of anyone out there. They hate him and he hates them but it all persists.
One small disputation, David: I think a lot of us know how Rage Monkeys “throw others into a tizzy.” You find them in every field, every line of work. I’m worked for newspaper editors that I would describe — and I don’t throw this term around lightly — as psychotic. (As in, literally throwing things at employees. And no, I’m not exaggerating.) And in academia? Don’t ask. In fact, I’d be willing to bet that everyone on this thread has had to deal with someone at some time in the workplace who is/was a frothing rage-a-holic. A rage-a-holic with a lower profile, no doubt. But a rage-a-holic nonetheless.
One slight problem with your theorem, David… most people don’t know who Nikki Finke is, let alone give a shit about her. You and Nikki and Wells are all medium-sized fish in a pretty small pond, while the likes of myself are tiny guppies who watch from the edge of the pond and wonder what this shit is that we’re going to be getting ourselves into when we mature.
The only person who should be giving a fuck about Nikki Finke and her actions is Nikki Finke. By constantly trying to “expose” her, you are giving her and her positions a patina of legitimacy. Thus, I respectfully request you just stop talking about her. She’s like a troll on a bulletin board; the more attention you shower unto her, the more she will crave it and she’ll just become that much worse.
Defang her by ignoring her. Let her sell crazy someplace else. We’re all stocked up here.
Er… in my above post… that should read “I’ve worked for newspaper editors…,” not “I’m worked…” I don’t want to give the impression that any editor I’m working for now is anything but a sweetheart.
You speak in such convoluted code that I almost believe you. I don’t want to seem ungrateful (except for the red), and I’m sure it’s troubling and compromising for you, or anyone in your position, to try to report on a situation you are at the center of it and fearful of reprisal from inside the circle and from the subject herself, but tell me you’ll try, in the future, to be more informative about it and I’ll leave you alone for a while.
I didn’t mean that as a threat.
I will write what I write as I see fit… as I have for the last decade.
And Ed… if Nikki means nothing to you, that is fine. Frankly, the conversation of Nikki tends to be aimed at people who never comment in here… but are nonetheless here.
It has always been my position that if I see what I feel is a problem, I will write about it… whether it is a studio, a movie, a journalist or whomever. I try to be fair. I try to be honest. And I offer a lot of opinion which can be disputed as anyone else with an opinion sees fit. If I spent my time worrying about who would like/care about/read what I wrote, I would write very little indeed.
“Three weeks ago, she laid into HBO for its
She didn’t think of it as a ‘sell-out’ thing but as a ‘pretentious artist’ thing.
“I will write what I write as I see fit… as I have for the last decade.” hmmm “I make my deadlines. I decide what I write. I have total control.”
Did DP ever answer NF’s comment about her box office figures that she left here for him when he was travelling?
“And Ed… if Nikki means nothing to you, that is fine. Frankly, the conversation of Nikki tends to be aimed at people who never comment in here… but are nonetheless here.”
Understood.
“It has always been my position that if I see what I feel is a problem, I will write about it… whether it is a studio, a movie, a journalist or whomever. I try to be fair. I try to be honest. And I offer a lot of opinion which can be disputed as anyone else with an opinion sees fit. If I spent my time worrying about who would like/care about/read what I wrote, I would write very little indeed.”
I think you misinterpreted. I’m simply saying that trying to shame Ms. Finke into changing her ways, or whatever it is you think you can accomplish, is a truly Quixotic effort. Even when she is wrong, she is never wrong. It’s always the other person, or someone else from whom she got her info, who is wrong. But keep attacking that windmill if you really think you can knock it down.
You know you all saw it, I’ll save it for Friday’s Box Office Hell faceoff.
I know that Nikki will never be shamed into anything. She has no shame.
And I didn’t see Nikki’s thing… was it the $2 million variation on the $150 million Transformers week?
P.S Cute attempt to equate, T Holly. Perhaps you’ll post that in Nikki’s comments section, where her readers freely take her to task every day.
It was your July 29 post.
How amusing that MCN now includes my weekly tracking as part of its own. Unfortunately, MCN is not reporting my numbers accurately. The 3-day projected total I gave for “Die Hard 4” should be $25M to $30M. It’s simple math: I said pic was supposed to make 5-day total of $40M-$45M, and it had already taken in $15M its first two days. MCN refuses to correct the error. Why?
(FYI: The tracking numbers and analysis I post weekly come from my own reporting. I confer with: top film financing guys, Wall Street analysts, marketing and/or distribution experts, agents, and studios.)
Posted by: Nikki Finke at July 1, 2007 11:35 AM
Nikki Finke is ridiculous. Part of me thinks that she’s not worth talking about, but another part of me feels that if we talk about her enough we’ll all realize what a joke she is and she’ll go away. But, I guess she’ll just continue to blackmail her way to the top, using what information she has to gain more information. She is truly one of the worst gossips on the web and does more to hurt perceived integrity of all internet journalists and columnists.
Also, I’m still stumped as to how being an insulin-dependent diabetic would prevent her from leaving her home. It makes zero sense, which leads me to believe that in addition to all her other wonderful qualities, she is also a liar.
RE: Nikki’s FYI, what’s the difference if she’s lying anyway, right? Haven’t people helped you, David, and don’t they help you everytime you talk to them? The difference comes down to tactics, ok, fine. Maybe someday, someone will write a big article about it. Gotta go now.
Noah, everyone’s different and everytime I go to her site expecting gossip and scoops, I’m disappointed because it’s pretty straight ahead, just better written. Where’s the joke? It’s a big planet, get along.
Well, looking through the archives, T Holly, the chart, like Nikki’s projections, were posted before Thursday numbers came in. As Nikki changes her copy instead of adding or correction, I have no idea when she posted what currently exists on her site.
As it turned out, the Thursday numbers were unexpectedly low, so my projection of how that would suggest 3-day totals were $3 million low as well.
I was travelling and my first notice of this was a typically nasty note from Nikki, as opposed to a simple request to change what had evolved into a minor error. This was the start of an e-mail barrage of insults, threats, lies, and other made up notions of reality that went on until I finally cut off communication on Monday.
As a result, I didn’t go out of my way to make the change on, again, a completely transient piece of copy that wasn’t even on MCN’s home page come Sunday.
For the record, had I made the change, the high estimate of “Nikki’s Pals” on Die Hard would have still been the lowest estimate on the chart ($30m) and her range would still have been off by between $8.4m and $3.4 million. The next furthest estimate off the actual weekend was $1.6m.
As Ed Douglas (and MCN staff, often asked to make changes while I am travelling and not near a computer) can attest, if someone just asks for a reasonable change on something like a human being, I am more than happy to make the change as quickly as possible, no only on MCN, but then cut and pasted on the blog as well. I believe in the truth, even in the silly game of projections. But I also believe that giving a screaming child what they are screaming for is the best way to insure future bad behavior. And I don’t think she, her pals, or you as a reader paid much of a price in this situation.
T-Ho… if you don’t care whether someone who says they are a truth-telling journalist is lying, I can’t argue the issue.
But I would like to borrow your car, your ATM card, and your wife/girlfriend for an evening if that’s ok. Nothing’ll happen. Swear!
I know David needs my defense like Don Murphy needs more money, but he’s not joshing: On the few occasions when I have e-mailed him to warn him about an error on the site — and I haven’t been nasty, or nyah-nyah-nyah!-ish in my tone — he’s been very quick to correct the error.
On the other hand: I dunno, maybe it’s just me, but I can’t help feeling this vibe of sexual tension between Nikki and Dave. Almost as bad as the vibe between Nicol and Jeffmcm. It’s practically Shakespearean, like Beatrice and Benedick in Much Ado About Nothing.
Or between you and me, Joe? Except you’re more in the Falstaffian mode, methinks.
“I can’t help feeling this vibe of sexual tension between Nikki and Dave”
c’mon Joe you know she aint his type (i.e. young starlet with PT & TA).
“Or between you and me, Joe? ” careful Jeff. The Don might see that statement as ‘blog cheating’ in a sense.
‘what God hath joined let no other poster tear asunder’
if you do get a bell from your ISP Dave just take down your prefacing/opinion bit *before* the actual article and you should be okay unless it’s WWD insisting on the take down.
Instead of talking about other journalists something more interesting…have you heard anything or seen anything of Coraline? It would be nice to hear about that.
http://www.mousecircus.com/coraline/flash/coraline.html
I ended up meeting the guy who runs Bay’s website today a nice guy named Nelson. He saw my own thread on my board about the Finke fiasco. He told me that HE asked her to remove the Bay Blog entry as it came from his site. He proved to her he was who he said he was by posting HOW ABOUT THIS BITCH? on bay.com. And she offered the same bribe to him- give her dirt about Bay and she would take it down. Journalist no, See You Next Tuesday for sure.
Coraline is based on a book by my pal Neil Gaiman, produced by my friend Bill Mechanic and directed by the amazing Henry Selick. It will be released by Rogue and because of that, will make $12.00 USD domestic.
moral relativism, don
“Perhaps you’ll post that in Nikki’s comments section, where her readers freely take her to task every day.”
Wait… there’s a comments section on DHD? Or are you being facetious? Beause if she did have a comments section, I’m sure she woudn’t get away with half the stuff she does/says.
I remember for a while, I was convinced she was posting links to her column on another message board I frequent but people are so tough on errors there that I think she slinked away with her tail between her legs.
thanks Dave for the link…tho I didn’t see anything on it about the movie unless I am picking the wrong buttons.
I like Neil Gaiman, Bill Mechanic and I like Henry Selick (too bad more people didn;t see Moongirl).
I certainly hope it makes more than 12USD!
Maybe I should send a checque directly to Mechanic to cut out Rogue if they won;t do a proper job getting it out.
TH Hung
moral relativism?
bribery, blackmail and angling for dirt are usually negatives. even in Lucretia Borgia’s time they were negatives.
He wasn’t brided to take it down from his site? And Don wasn’t brided to take it down from his site, too? No I’m not starting any rumors, I just have a big brain when it comes to understanding cause and effect.
HUNG
This site is not ESL. We were BOTH told that IF we bribed HER she would take it down. Never mind the fact that it was automatically copyrighted by someone else. Never mind the fact that the person who wrote it no longer wanted it up. SeeyounextTuesday KEPT the posting up UNLESS myself or Nelson offered her dirt on Bay. This is gangster behavior.
Nelson took the original down not because someone offered him a hot bride, but because Bay told him to. It was never even on my site so I got no Brides.
Your BRAIN is smaller than your vocabulary and quite damaged.
Person attacks aside, you sound extremely threatening. Are you saying you only opened a comments thread on your site and provided a link, but didn’t actually print Bay’s letter?
My English is fine, I read perfectly well between the lines of your righteous indignation. The facts are that you guys removed it under pressure.
I know I’m late to the party on this but why would anyone think it’s a personality flaw to not go out of your apartment? Some of the best writers out there are shut-ins. JD Salinger, Don Delillo, Cormac McCarthy. Not saying Finke is any of those but since when did shunning the shallow ponds in THIS town become a bad thing? Oh and yeah, must be nice to be Ephron and Bernstein spawn. “Here you are, sir. This is your job handed to you on a silver platter.” It was a (mostly) fair story though it did concentrate too much, I thought, on Finke’s private life details as if to say, “she’s crazy folks – see, she couldn’t pay her rent.” And it smacked, to me, of payback. She writes about others so lets get her. Eh.
HUNG
1- It is personal attacks,not person, your english is shit
2- FUCK YOU my righteous indignation is towards liars and morons
3- FUCK YOU I never removed it I never had it up- why would I post a slam that peripherally attacked me on my own website you subliterate cretin?
4- FUCK YOU- Bay took it down because he thought better of it.
What kind of pressure could there have been, you uneducated, dumb board troll?
I mean really, how about saying Double Dragon sucked or something? At least you’d make some sort of sense, you underdweller.
But Don: Double Dragon was fun.
I thought money bought happiness?
[And Phillip Wuntch, one of the great gents among American film critics, was letting his eager underling — me — review the likes of Friday the 13th, The Last Metro, Halloween II and Cutter’s Way.]
I haven’t said anything about this for the long while that I’ve noticed you posting on this board, Mr. Leydon, but I grew up in Dallas reading your reviews as a kid and followed you into the Houston papers when my family moved down the I-45 in 1989. My best friend Phil and I followed your reviews religiously from our homes in the rather conservative Spring, Texas and that’s what drew us from the suburbs into downtown to, say, our first times going to the River Oaks 3 and seeing movies other than, say, “Look Who’s Talking, Too.” For awhile there, we just went to every single last movie that you gave a good review to. Phil’s now an actor/theater director in Minnesota, I ended up becoming a film journo/critic (an awful one) and am now a screenwriter (an awful one) and another of our (younger) high school buddies who would occasionally tag along with us (more Phil, than me) was Lee Pace, who is now an actor as well (a great one).
One question – did you switch to the Houston Chronicle at some point?
SJR: Many thanks for the kind words. After the Houston Post shut down, I did some free-lance feature writing for the Chronicle, then reviewed films for The Houston Press (for about 1 1/2 years) and KPRC/Channel 2 (four years). If you click on my name below, you can visit my blog and see what else I’ve been up to. (Well, I don’t include the arrests, but that’s because none resulted in a conviction.) Once again, thanks for the kind words.
Bipedalist, I don’t think it’s a personality flaw that Nikki doesn’t leave her apartment. I think it’s a personality flaw that she is blatantly lying about her reasons why, instead of owning up to it. I’ve been a diabetic for most of my life and it has never prevented me from doing a single thing, so that is just a flat-out lie and I find it somewhat offensive being a fellow diabetic. It makes it seem like diabetes is a handicap, instead of the annoyance that it truly is. And this seems to me to be fundamentally wrong for a “journalist” the fudge something like this, especially one that takes filmmakers to task for not always coming clean. She is not crazy because she doesn’t leave her house, in fact I don’t know if “crazy” is a good word for her at all. Instead, I would say she is unethical, hurtful and mean-spirited.
It’s funny, BiP (maybe not so)… people go on about things like Nikki’s alleged agoraphobia (though I don’t think the guy who is also diabetic was making fun of her, but noting that diabetes does not mean being chained to your bed) or Harry Knowles’ weight or whatever personal thing there is to go on about. These are easy vulnerabilities.
I don’t care about any of Nikki’s personal habits. I only care about her destructive, reckless behavior towards me, other journalists, and others in the industry in which I toil. And I care even more about the journalists who give in to the pressure and empower it by hiding from it.
The same way that I give her no negative marks for whatever she does personally, I also don’t give her positive marks for those proclivities or for “being a rebel.” She is no rebel. And she is certainly not a speaker of truth to power. She is abusive to some in power, which turns a lot of people on. But as it is not a part of a bigger search for truth, it is as lame as attacks on the down and out. Her turn on is that she speaks for others who are angered at the power of others.
Here she has you smacking down Jacob Bernstein, who I am pretty sure you have never met and probably never heard of before reading all this, and attacking him for being his parents’ son. You don’t know if he is a good man or bad, hard worker or ne’er-do-well, or even what alleged flaws there are in his piece. You are even willing to call the quite positive piece “payback” because of your own bias and Nikki’s skills at shutting down a public discussion of the piece… which you might have noticed has a direct on-the-record attribution for pretty much every single story and the unnamed quotes are pretty balanced. Moreover, if you talk to anyone who has dealt with Nikki in the past, you will see how tame the piece really was. (I will privately guide you to one of our mutual, pretty mild friends who will never mention Nikki in print again if they can avoid it, lest they ever have to speak to her again.)
YOU are what Nikki’s method of operating thrives on. She is a propagandist of the most dramatic form. She not only spins truth (90%) into lies (10%) daily, in print and off-line, but she seeks to shut down the free flow of discourse in order to control and give power to her spin.
And it